Coral

We said we'd walk together baby come what may

That come the twilight should we lose our way

If as we're walkin' a hand should slip free

I'll wait for you

And should I fall behind

Wait for me--









--Edward--







He had not been home at all in the last four days, and he was a bit shocked by the damage he found on the stairwell. Several of the balusters had been broken, the plaster and wood in the walls had been blasted; the sparks leaving scorch marks in the carpet. Bits of wood and plaster dusted the stairs.



Worst of all he could see, even in the dim light, the bloodstain by the newel post, where Amanda had struck her head. Several crimson droplets peppered the wood, bloody fingerprints where she had clutched at the passing posts. Drawing closer, he discovered several long, strawberry hairs caught in the splintery wood.



He gently freed them, as though they had feelings of their own, and absentmindedly combed them smooth before wrapping them around his finger. Taking out his wand then, he began cleaning the stairs.



He repaired the holes, cleaned away the debris, and replaced the balusters. He manually shook the railing to be sure it was sturdy, before cleaning and re-polishing the wood. He was satisfied only when there was no trace of the attack. This took a long time, and hew as surprised to hear the clock strike midnight.



He was about to walk on into his study, when a thought occurred to him. Taking out his wand once more, he began ascending the staircase. Out of precaution, he nudged open the door to their bedroom.



It was just as it had been when he left it last, save that Amanda was not asleep in the unmade bed. He looked into the second bedroom, and all the other rooms, saving one in particular for last.



The nursery.



He stood a moment, regarding the wooden door, reaching out and trying the knob. Just as he suspected, it opened easily under his touch. He knew for a fact that Amanda had kept this room locked. He knew that she kept the key in the box on her bureau. Would Polly have known that?





He stepped inside, and illuminated his wand. The light reflected off the stars, and the glass eyes of the dolls and bears. Frowning, he sent a charm at them, and they all closed their eyes simultaneously. In his opinion, there was nothing so disturbing as an empty room filled with dolls.



Almost filled with dolls, he noted. There was one that was missing. But in it's place, was the answer to a question that had been bothering him for over six months. In the toy rocking chair, it's ruffled petticoats spread delicately, sat the pink bear. The one Amanda had received anonymously for Christmas, and he had hidden behind the cushion.



When Amanda had been dressing to go to Eloise's that night, he had searched for the abominable thing, but it was already gone. He thought Amanda must have taken it back out, and had searched everywhere for it, intending to burn it. Picking it up now, he saw that a new note was pinned to the bear's pinafore.



" Mudblood Thief." was all it read.



" No time like the present." he told the bear, and dropped it in the fire grate. " Evanesco."



He concluded that Polly must have still been home that day, and therefore able to take the bear out from behind the cushion. Either that or Demogene had been here. He shuddered at that thought. Had Demogene truly been clever enough to open his wards? Had she been coming and going in his house this entire time?



They had been made fools of, all of them, he realized.



Downstairs once more, he decided to inspect Polly's room. That door was resolutely locked--and it took a powerful blasting spell to force it open. Regardless of his intentions, he did feel slightly callous for intruding on what had once been Polly's private space.



Callous or no, he was impressed immediately by the almost unreal neatness of the room. The bed was tightly made, the curtains ironed into perfect pleats, and the floor immaculately bare.





A floor-to-ceiling shelf on one wall held a small collection of books, arranged in alphabetical order. A series of baskets held odds and ends, such as cosmetics, pins, combs, pencils,...a handful of knuts. Most of the shelves were empty, but one held a row of photographs; each framed in black.



It was Polly's family, her mother and father, her siblings, even her grandmother. All were smiling and waving. A glance at her small desk showed that she had been writing a letter to her Cousin Maretha. A nice copy of " Gulliver's Travels" lay on her bedside table, a paper bookmark positioned a third of the way through the dense sea of faux-gold edged pages.



He opened the closet. All of Polly's clothes were arranged color groups, warm-weather clothes to the left, and cool weather clothes to the right. A second bar held several cloaks and capes, a formal dress, and a parasol.



A neat row of hats were lined across the shelf, her shoes were stored in the boxes they had come with, labeled with the dates of purchase on one end. Pushing through the clothes, and suppressing a shudder as the fingery fringe of one blouse caressed his hand, he stepped into the back. There was quite a large open space, nothing that anyone with a few charms up their sleeve couldn't create.





Usually if a witch adjusted the size of her closet, it was to make room for extra clothes, a dressmakers dummy, a new shoe collection...even boxes of mementos. Nothing of the sort was in Polly's closet. There was only the draped form of the doll Persephone, seated on the floor in the corner. A knitted jumper had been hastily cast over her head, but an obvious china leg protruded from under the hem.



" And there you are." he said, but not to the doll. He was referring instead to a tiny black thread in the paneling.



" Alohamora..." he said softly. The paneling swung inward slowly. Holding up his wand, he peered into the darkness. " Aha!"



He did not recognize the room before him, but he recognized immediately that it was not part if his own house. This spell was very complex, a way of linking rooms without them actually being contiguous.



They most usually had some sort of spell protecting them from trespassers, so he was careful not to step through. That was a job for the Aurors. He pushed the door to, kicking the jumper so that it's sleeve blocked the door from closing completely.



" I'm sure Giles will be interested in this." he murmured to himself.





Edward left everything else just as he had found it, and went to his study. He had every intention of Flooing Giles when he sat at his desk, but instead, he took out an envelope, and began gently unwinding Amanda's hair from his finger.



It was nearly as long as his arm, so he had some difficulty coiling it into the envelope. He could not have explained why he did it. It was just impulse, he supposed, scribbling a few words on the front before leaning over to unlock the bottom drawer. He rested his head a moment on the desk's edge after placing the envelope inside, and his last thought before falling asleep was how uncomfortable that position was.



---



Regardless of discomfort, he slept well into the next morning. He might have slept longer had it not been for Crisp, who stood hooting in concern, his long, ugly, scarred legs only inches from Edward's nose. His sudden movement startled the owl, who shed several feathers, and made a sound like a metal brake.



Ignoring the bird, he stumbled to the fireplace and Flooed Giles. His friend was not in, but a perky girl with a lisp jotted down a message and promised that Mr. Barkwater would have it as soon as he returned.



Edward remembered to thank her distractedly.





***





A half hour later, he arrived at the hospital, where he found Amanda to be fully awake, and alone.



" Where is your mother?" he asked, pulling a chair close to her bed.



" They made her go home and rest. " she answered blandly. " Agnes came this morning."



" Did she?" his interest was piqued.



" Yes. She heard about what happened...from her husband." she picked morosely at thin blanket band resting across her waist. He instinctively took her hand, but she winced loudly, causing him to drop it just as suddenly.



" Still bruised." she mumbled, apologetically.



He asked what Agnes had said, and Amanda told him that her cousin had been hysterical, demanding to know the details. From what Amanda could deduce, Agnes had demanded the same information of Adelfried, after overhearing a conversation between him and Dolores.



" She had a black eye." Amanda said. " And she didn't have her wand with her. When I asked, she said she had lost it."



" I seriously doubt that. What happened?"



" Grandmother was trying to calm her down, and then Eloise came, and said they would take her home...but she said she wanted to see Demogene. They left just before you arrived." she tried to situate herself more comfortably.



Her eyes were surrounded by ghastly dark circles, and when she spoke, it was muffled, as she could only open her swollen lips slightly.



" Is there anything I can do?" he inquired, hopefully. She could not ask too much of him at the moment.



" I want to go home." she said, her voice trembling. " I hate this hospital!"



" I will talk to the healers about it." he promised. " Can I bring you anything?"



" A book perhaps." she replied after a few moment's thought.



" Which book?''



" Any book." she reached across with her unbroken hand and took his." Anything engaging. I...have to have some diversion. No, wait. No novels. I couldn't bear a novel right now. Perhaps a reference book. Something very boring." Her voice trembled slightly.



He leaned over and pressed a kiss to the back of her fingers.



" I'll bring you the entire bookstore. Something on the history of Spellotape."



She gave a weak smile and struggled to sit up a little more, biting her lip as her knitting bones protested, then wincing as her lip protested.



" The Ministry sent a note to me this morning."



His face tightened, the only outward sign that if felt as though a cold stone had plummeted to the bottom of his stomach. Were they going to Obliviate her and send her away? Would he allow that?



" What did it say?"



She gingerly pulled a small slip of paper from beneath her pillow. He took it carefully. It was written in a bold, slanting hand, on prissy yellow paper with a marble pattern printed over it in grey.



" In light of your recent misfortune due to circumstances beyond your control, we at the Ministry of Magic have decided to allot you one extra year in which to meet your obligations, beginning on the day of your hospital release.

Sincerely,

A.A. '





He didn't know whether to be relieved, angered, or both. The Ministry's

' generosity' was certainly welcome, but the timing was somewhat cold. He refolded the note carefully.



" Well..." he began, as though searching for the correct thing to say. At last he took the note and tore it in half." Let's not let them worry us again."



She smiled a little more at that, then exclaimed suddenly;



" Oh! Has anyone cared for Crisp?"



" Yes, I let him have the run of the dry pantry this morning while I spoke with Giles."



She relaxed back into the pillows.



" Poor thing, I forgot about him until now. That sounds like mother back. Did Giles have any news about Demogene?"



He shook his head at her.



" Not yet." not truly a false-hood. There was news, but he was ' not yet' willing to discuss any of it with her. Not until she was stronger.



---



They interrogated Demogene again, but received no important information. No matter how deeply they delved, they only managed to discover that she was simply obsessed.



A special wizard trained in mental illness had been summoned and he rationalized, ( for forty minutes in language no one could understand) that she had been traumatized in her youth by the death of her mother and brother, the overbearing nature of an elder sibling, and what she perceived as her own failed femininity.





With a slight amount of pushing, he was easily persuaded to declare her officially insane, so that the Inquisitors could promptly, and somewhat unethically empty her memories into a Pensieve and examine them at length. Everything that she had confessed to was there, and they could witness the very instances that she used every spell, right up to the attack on Amanda.



Edward wasn't allowed to see into it, but Giles told him later, in great detail what had happened, and complimented Amanda on her bravery and quick reflexes.



" She handled it with such grace and presence. You should be very proud of her." he said.



I am...Edward thought. He just did not have the words to express how much.



Even with the Pensieve,they did not find the source of the poison she had fed to Amanda. She received it, as she said anonymously.They had seen her door spell in use; it was how she gained access to Polly, who had truly been an unwilling victim in the entire ordeal.



One memory showed Polly being Crucio'd, but still refusing to comply.



Afterwards, Demogene had Obliviated her, then Imperieo'd her to perform some rather lewd acts.



" That door leads directly into Ms. Rookwood's attic." Giles informed him. " I'll want to investigate it."



" Of course. The wards are down at the moment." Edward said, giving his friend permission to search the house alone.



Giles went on to say that he thought Demogene might have an accomplice, or at least, another person had to be involved at sometime. There were some rather obvious gaps in her memory, spaced in such a manner as to arouse suspicion.



" Agnes, perhaps?" Edward suggested.



" I wouldn't assume. No. If it is she neglected to remove herself from some other rather questionable memories."



" That could be a clever ploy."



" Yes..yes it could. I suppose it is too early to exclude anyone from suspicion. Even you."



"Me?" Edward cried.



" Everyone!" Giles insisted. " And speaking of everyone, I found that Ashwell. "



" Oh?"



" He's been a guest at Blackmoor since the Ministry let him go. " Giles puffed out his cheeks and frowned thoughtfully. " So of course, he had powerful witnesses to claim he had been out of trouble. "



" Of course. So what do we do now?"



Giles related that the new specialist was arrogant enough to believe that he could restore, with time, Demogene's missing memories. The charm that had removed them was not entirely fail-proof, and there were many successful restorations documented. It was a time consuming task, a labor of love, so to speak, but it wasn't impossible.



" I suppose we wait and see what he discovers. I can't go arresting everyone and spilling their memories."



" If I thought I could get away with it..." Edward said between his teeth. " I most certainly would try. "



" Yes, well, that's understandable. But as I have said, you too are under suspicion. The best thing you can all do is keep quiet, and hope that head doctor finds what we need. "



The only part of this that Edward related to Amanda was the fact that Polly had been completely innocent.



" It's still hard to understand. I saw her! When I have nightmares, it is Polly attacking me!"



" That's only natural." he soothed. " But it was Demogene. Giles said that they are doing their best to discover why, and how."



Amanda nodded glumly. She had not been able to feel any grief, so shocked had she been by the course of events going on around her. All she felt was a hollowness, overshadowed by the ever-present burning discomfort of the magical spells helping her bones to repair.



She wanted to confess this to him, but decided that, after all the hardship she had brought down upon him, it would only make her seem more hateful in his mind. She forced herself to smile weakly as he rose for Stella, who appeared in the doorway.



For once he was relieved to see his wife's mother, and even doubly glad to see her companion. Amele, looking plump and indecently happy despite her worried expression swept into the room in a comforting way, granting her sympathy not only to Amanda but to him as well, in such a genuine way that he actually felt better. Amele had that sort of magic about her.



***



Three days later, after no small amount of pleading and threatening, the Healers agreed ( either from genuine belief that their patient was recovered, or from the honest desire to have some peace) that Amanda was well enough to be transported home.



---------



If I Should Fall Behind--Springsteen